The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. was a FOX network Western series created by Jeffrey Boam & Carlton Cuse, starring Bruce Campbell in the lead role. The show aired from August 27, 1993 to May 20, 1994, lasting for one season & 27 episodes. It was produced by Boam/Cuse Productions and Warner Bros. Television. Plot Set in the American West of 1893, the series followed Brisco County, Jr., a Harvard-educated lawyer turned bounty hunter who is hired by a group of wealthy industrialists to track down and capture outlaw John Bly and his gang. Cast *Bruce Campbell as Brisco County, Jr. *Julius Carry as Lord Bowler *Christian Clemenson as Socrates Poole Production Conception and development In 1989, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" was released in the cinemas. It was a commercial success, earning its producers US$115 million from domestic screenings. The action-packed story, unfolding in a manner reminiscent of Saturday matinee movie serials, about the adventures of an archaeologist was written by Jeffrey Boam, with development and story help from Carlton Cuse; this film was their third collaboration, after "Lethal Weapon 2" and "3". According to Cuse, Bob Greenblatt, an executive at Fox Broadcasting Company, engaged him and Boam to develop a television series "because of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". Greenblatt wanted a show that had a style similar to the "Indiana Jones" movies. Cuse started watching old serials and noticed that many fell into two genres: Westerns and science fiction. This gave Boam and Cuse the idea to combine the genres. They decided to emulate the serials' style; for example, each act within an episode begins with a title, usually a pun, and ends with a cliffhanger. Boam and Cuse did not intend for the show to be historically accurate. Their aim was to create an action-adventure with a modern feel. Cuse told USA Today, "We're not approaching this show as if we were doing a period piece. We see it as a contemporary program. Our characters just happen to be living in the West with 1990s sensibilities. The Indiana Jones movies were period pieces too, but you never thought of them that way." Anachronisms and pop culture references were intentionally inserted into the series. The show was intended to be family friendly, so violence was minimized in favor of having Brisco think his way out of dangerous situations. Boam said, "In the two-hour pilot Brisco doesn't even once have to shoot his gun. Our violence is cartoonish. There is no pain and suffering." Bruce Campbell was prominently featured in advertisements, billboards, and even a trailer shown in movie theaters. When the series was being promoted in the summer of 1993, Fox Entertainment chief Sandy Grushow said that if Campbell "isn't the next big television star, I'll eat my desk". Writing Cuse served as the show runner and head writer. Boam (who served as executive producer) also contributed scripts for the show. The writing staff included John Wirth, Brad Kern, Tom Chehak, David Simkins, and John McNamara. They followed Cuse's informal instruction that the tone of the show remain "just under over-the-top": the series would be humorous but not too campy. Every member of the staff participated in breaking down and analyzing the stories they conceived. Worth commented, "there was a very high percentage of ideas that worked in the room and got translated to paper that worked when you put them on film. That doesn't always happen." Cuse described long hours writing the show, including several overnight sessions. Each episode of "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." was filmed in seven days, so the turn-around time for scripts was one week. McNamara said that he became a "student of TV history" while writing for Brisco, reviewing old episodes of Maverick for inspiration on using humor in the Western genre. He said the writing team felt the television audience was ready for a "trans-genre form", because much of the audience grew up with "Lethal Weapon", "Star Trek" and "The Wild Wild West." Researchers Lynnette Porter and Barry Porter acknowledge the writer's familiarity with Mark Twain's novel Pudd'nhead Wilson. Porter and Porter describe the novel as an "ancestor text", because the characters of Brisco and Bly both refer to it, and say that this type of literary device is used again by Cuse in Lost. One of the challenges the writers faced was scaling down their ideas to make them feasible for production. Cuse said that he let such ideas flourish because of his relative inexperience with writing for television series; an example given by the writers was Boam's idea for a full-sized "pirate ship on wheels". The writers quickly realized they needed to scale the idea down to something the production designers could create. They settled on putting a full pirate crew on a stagecoach with cannons. Kern said it was better to "shoot past the mark, and come back to it, rather than start below it". He elaborated on this, saying, "if you envision the 40-foot galleon and go back from that, you'll always end up with more than if you start out with a pirate on a horse." As the series progressed during its broadcast season, the writers received frequent notes and directives from Fox network executives calling for increases and decreases in the science-fiction, comedy and traditional Western elements. Cuse said, "I think we did a particularly good job of maintaining continuity with all the schizophrenic notes we were getting from the network." However, midway through the first season, the writers made a thematic shift from science-fiction to more comedy and adventure. Cuse said, "We were biting off more than we could chew... we were trying to do a comedic action adventure Western, with tongue-in-cheek humor, genuine drama, plus science fiction. All these things added too many elements to serve simultaneously." By the final third of the series, the writers had wrapped up the science-fiction plot with the Orb and focused more on traditional Western motifs. Broadcast History "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." premiered on the Fox network at 8:00 pm on Friday, August 27, 1993, with a two-hour pilot movie. In order to bolster viewer interest in the show, Fox rebroadcast the pilot two days later at 7:00 pm. Both airings of the pilot returned strong ratings. The show's ratings for the pilot and first episode were high, particularly with the demographic of adults aged 18–49. The series was aired in Canada, including on Global Toronto (channel 29). The pilot movie was followed by 26 episodes, each 45 minutes long and airing at 8:00 pm on Fridays. Fox Entertainment chief Sandy Grushaw openly touted Brisco and its star Bruce Campbell. The network fully expected the show to be its breakout hit of the year, a distinction which eventually went to the show's follow-up, "The X-Files". Hoping that more viewers would follow the show as it progressed, Fox approved producing an entire season of the show, despite post-pilot low ratings. However, subsequent episodes failed to attract more viewers and "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." was cancelled at end of its first and only season. After the series ended, Fox retransmitted the show on Sunday nights at 8:00 pm during July and August 1994; it was later broadcast for a short time in syndication, airing on the U.S. cable channel TNT. Category:FOX Shows Category:1990s television shows Category:Western